EARI China

China faces growing land disputes
By Daniel Griffiths
BBC News, Beijing

They came to the village of Shengyou, south of
Beijing, in the early hours of the morning.

A gang of more than 100 men wearing camouflage gear
and construction helmets, some armed with hunting
rifles, clubs and shovels, clashed violently with
local villagers. Six people died.

The riot in Shengyou in June was actually nothing new.
Such skirmishes over land are getting increasingly
common in China.

But what was different about this one - and what
ultimately made it stand out as an example of a much
wider problem - was that the incident was filmed by a
local resident and smuggled out to the international
media.

The battle of Shengyou village has come to highlight
one of China's sharpest social issues - the Communist
Party's complete control of land allocation.

More than 66 million Chinese farmers have lost their
land in the past 10 years. It is a land grab which has
fattened the wallets of government officials and left
tens of thousands of people homeless.

In recent years, however, more and more farmers have
become aware of their rights, and have begun to resist
- leading to rising social unrest.

Some estimates suggest more than three million people
were involved in demonstrations last year, and the
government in Beijing is getting increasingly
concerned.

Violent exchange

Chinese state media said the residents of Shengyou
village had been resisting the takeover of their
property by an electricity company, which wanted to
build a power plant there.

The gang was trying to force them to give up. It
emerged that there had been a similar clash earlier in
the year, which had gone unreported.

It is a situation which is repeated tens of thousands
of times every year in China - most of them
unmentioned in the country's tightly controlled state
media.

Many peasant farmers go to Beijing to file petitions
and complain to higher government offices about their
losses.

But local governments often set up checkpoints to
block the petitioners, or send officials to Beijing to
round them up and lock up the leaders when they return
home.

Other villagers seek legal help, but even if the court
rules in their favour, the rulings are sometimes
totally ignored and the bulldozers continue to roll
in.

These land rights disputes go to the very heart of
many of the problems facing China.

In this vast country, all land is owned by the state,
which gives the Communist Party the ultimate decision
on how it is used.

In the past this has been an important factor in the
country's rapid economic growth, allowing the
government to requisition land it might need for
development.

But it has also caused massive discontent. When China
built the Three Gorges Dam, hundreds of thousands of
people were either relocated, often to poor
agricultural land, or received inadequate
compensation.

Hou Wenzhou, director of Empowerment and Rights
Institute, a Beijing-based non-government
organisation, summed up the nature of this aggressive
land seizure in a recent interview with the BBC.

"Legal entitlement of farm land is not clearly defined
in China. It looks like it belongs to the farmers, but
if the government wants to take it away, it's very
easy," he said.

"The farmers are told to give up their personal
interests and individual rights to serve the state.
The interests of the farmers are totally ignored."

The Communist Party's complete control over land
allocation has also led to corruption on an enormous
scale.

Power rests in the hands of party cadres, and corrupt
local officials can often act with impunity. They
sometimes take over land to sell directly to
developers, pocketing the profits.

They also take bribes or cream off much of the
compensation paid to those who are moved out of their
homes.

This abuse of authority in the pursuit of wealth is
one of the dark sides of China's economic miracle.

Fear of dissent

All this is causing concern in Beijing. Throughout the centuries,
China's rulers have always feared instability.

In imperial times, rural rebellions and unrest
sometimes led to the downfall of dynasties.
In the modern era the Communist Party has kept a very
tight grip on power, ruthlessly suppressing any
challenge to its authority.

Its response to these protests has been to try to
strike a delicate balancing act.

State-run media have talked about crushing threats to stability, and
provincial authorities have used force to break up demonstrations.

But at the same time senior officials have publicly
declared that local corruption is to blame.

China's President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao
came into office saying they wanted to do more to
improve the lives of those living in China's rural
areas, but now they face a major challenge in the
countryside.

If they fail to address it, the situation could spiral
out of control.

But dealing with the problem will mean rooting out
endemic corruption in the Communist Party. And that is something that
successive Chinese leaders have so far failed to do.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4728025.stm

Published: 2005/08/02 00:35:52 GMT

(c) BBC MMV

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